Monthly Archives: April 2015

Well a busy weekend had me completely forgetting to post a report on this one, but hey, better late than never.

Saturday 25th April saw Robbie take to his first ever Senior event racing in the Southern Athletics League for AFD in the 1500m, a very long journey to deepest Devon, with three generations in tow, a day trip of sorts with a look round Braunton, and exploration in to a Braunton pub and a lovely lunch in a Braunton cafe pre-race.

The event hosted at the North Devon Athletics track targeted senior athletes but all athletes from U17 upward can compete so Robbie took the opportunity to have a go, representing AFD as their “B” stream runner. A combined A & B stream race fired off quickly at quite a pace, a pace that had it been sustained would have seen Robbie smash his PB, though that wasn’t to be, the race slowed somewhat in the middle before kicking off again in the last lap it was a very good race for Robbie, quite fast, but not too fast, quite competitive, but not too busy and ultimately it saw him taking the 5 team points for winning the B stream, with team mate Macgregor Cox taking 4 points for second place in the A stream, the actual race saw Robbie in third place overall, but as mentioned winning the B stream race for maximum points in an official time of 4:20.0 (though I had him down at 4:19.9) just over a second off his PB, not a bad start to the season.

Robbie with the leading pack in the Southern Athletics league 1500m – Match 1

Over to Oxford today for the first competitive track race of the season, Robbie competing in the U17’s 3000m. The weather was nice, sun shining but the wind was horrendous and would effect times throughout the event. The 3k started very quick, Robbie blasting out in front of the combined U17/U20 runners and completing the first 1k in an astonishing 2’46”, the wind and starting speed took their toll though and the pace simply could not be sustained, Robbie overtaken by 6 U20 runners, including AFD’s Dan Rickard, the last 400m saw Robbie claw two of those runners back in, finishing the race in 5th place, but winning the U17’s race by 3 seconds. The time of 9’36” was disappointing, but not unexpected given conditions and recent injury traits. A good run for Dan coming 4th in the under 20’s and setting a new PB of 9’31”.

Finally a shout out to Daisy D’Santos who won the U20’s women’s 3000m in a very convincing performance, lapping everyone except the 2nd and 3rd place runners.

So for Robbie, 1st race, 1st win, shame about the time but a great start all the same.

Robbie taking the bull by the horns.